He looked at the door he had walked through many times before - but this time it was different - something was trying to enter. He couldn't see it, but he could feel it. The skin quivered as he could feel the hairs on his forearms stand straight, as if a cold breeze had brushed by on a warm day.
But this was no warm day. It was dark, it was damp, it was dripping and he was alone - the blackness of the passageway lay behind, the chipped white paint of the wooden door ahead - like a massive bleached bone standing in the darkness as an edifice to the gates of the damned. Every fiber of his body twitched, begging him to turn away, let it be, ignorance is bliss. Yet, his feet stood firmly planted, his nerve endings unwilling to play their part and fire a message to run, not even for his own survival.
The vaulted ceiling lay high overhead, the walls too far to touch and still they crushed him between their narrowing march in his mind. The space of childhood had become a surrealist's dream, a twisted and distorted compilation of familiar, disjointed from reality, to form an architectural impossibility. It would have been beautiful if it hadn't been for the evil looking to enter and devour what was inside. Perhaps it was beautiful still - a primal scream that can only be created from pure fear.
The door shook as if hammered by a mighty fist, with flakes of peeling paint and dust falling silently to the floor and no sound emanating from what had caused them to break free from their perch. A second and the a third, until the fourth splintered the wood that had held the dark out for as long as it had stood guard.
He had always known that something had been waiting to enter this world, to take hold of all it can and drag it back to wherever it called home. Home. A pace of comfort and security, a place where one can be oneself, but what does that become when one is the core of horror and home is where hell is?
He looked on at the scene laid in front, the awe of the silence as the very walls vibrated in his ears and from the sliver of space where the shard of wood had fallen free, the gleaming shine from the darkness of a pupil, contrasted by the white of an eye, rimmed only by a thin line of fire as an iris, burning with intent.
Clawed fingers hooked through the crevice and started to tear it back, widening it a little more with each attempt - all the while the eye stayed focused, unwavering and unforgiving on the prey in wait, the child it had claimed as its own long ago. A deal struck and promises made and the time had come to claim its prize.
He knew he must act, do something or his life was to end before it had even had a chance to start. He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out - he tried again and a whisper passed his lips as he watched the boned arm reach through the now useless door and tear away at the chain that had held the world whole for so long and now, it was set to be torn apart.
As the door flew aside and the beast flooded into the corridor, with the last of his might his voice built inside and a light broke through his mouth to illuminate the space leaving no shadow, except on the face of death itself...
YOU CAN'T COME IN!
And in the light the evil stopped still in its tracks, inches from the face of the boy, eye to eye, as a grin crossed its face and it whispered.
Yes I can.
The darkness returned.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
